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D5 was fun. I felt almost "back in the swing of things" talking to all of the entrepreneurs, VCs, headhunters, corp dev guys, and BigCo CEOs. I still have a really hard time feeling comfortable schmoozing at cocktail parties and left most of them early. I think I'm fundamentally shy. My lack of focus and the subsequent difficulty in answering the question, "So! What do YOU do?" probably makes it worse.

I'm getting better at taking photos of celebrities, but I still have a hard time going up and saying "hi!" to people without an introduction. I should probably learn to get over that.

On the other hand, taking photos at conferences has added a new angle for me recently. I found that many people that I was meeting or able to otherwise "shoot" didn't have readily available CC'ed photos of them on the Net. This caused the photos of many people with Wikipedia articles to have lousy photos or no photos. Wikipedians have posted a Jane Metcalfe photo (Poor quality - I should shoot a new one...), my Vint Cerf photos, my Steve Russell and my Spacewar photo on Wikipedia. That gave me the idea to post other photos that I have of people with Wikipedia articles myself. So far I've done Mimi, Scott, Rob Pardo, Tom Chilton, Walt Mossberg, Pierre Omidyar, John Markoff, Cornelius and possibility some others that I have missed.

This has driven me to a sense of mission to liberate photos of "notable" for people to use on Wikipedia and other sites. This new "mission" makes me attend more conference sessions, which in the end, usually turn out to be worth it - compared to being lazy and sitting in my room online or something.

I learned a lot and met a bunch of people who I'm glad to have met. It makes me realize that I'd probably get a lot more work done if I live out here in California. On the other hand, I miss my compost and my garden and am anxious to get back home. I guess this identity stretching lifestyle is probably the right balance for my spiritual ADD, but I'm not sure it's really the best configuration long term...

6 Comments

Next time you are in Los Angeles, we need to get you to some of the quieter parts and up into the local hills. It's not all hustle, bustle, and concrete. There are plenty of places to have a garden and sit quietly.

I've been watching the pictures as they come in. I really enjoy it, despite never having met and not knowing 95% of the people you are shooting. Following the stream of people you shoot has that same "i'm familiar with this blog" and "i enjoy following this twitter" stream effect. It's inspired me to pull the camera back out of the bag and document things along the way.